Agrawal: AmEx is “King of Check-Ins,” and “Could Own Local”

VentureBeat’s Rocky Agrawal says American Express’ position as a payment network and card issuer give it the potential to be a dominating force in the growing local commerce niche.

“Last month, AmEx collected 60 data points on me from my transactions. If you view everyone of those as a check in, you realize how powerful that is. Very few companies have as much data on me,” he writes. “And other credit card networks like Visa and MasterCard don’t own the relationship with the card holders — Citibank, Chase, Bank of America and other issuers do — so the data is spread thin.”

The payment giant has to hope more of its cardholders feel the same way as Agrawal about its potential as a recommendation engine: “I would love to see AmEx use all of its data and algorithms to help me make decisions on where to spend my money,” he writes.